Revolution hits Manhattan

I understand how Muammar Gaddafi feels. I too lead a disparate unruly rabble. My days in power are also numbered.

My supreme authority has been as manager and captain of Manhattan United, a football team that bestrides New York City like a Colossus. Just as expat cricketers in the Big Apple were lionized in the novel Netherland, the players on our team deserve a big-budget movie made about us. That’s how I fantasize it anyway.

Manhattan United is really one unit of an international sub-culture of men drawn together by the Beautiful Game. Our mutating team is a United Nations of footy lovers. We have fielded expat players from Iceland, Brazil, India, Britain, Argentina, Morocco, Ghana, Mexico, Peru, France, Russia, Holland, India, Denmark and Japan.

I first joined the team in 2005, on the introduction of an Israeli-American filmmaker friend, Topaz. Brazilians dominated the team, with Portuguese the language of direction used by our captain, Sandro. He was a passionate player, quick to anger. When a player from arch rivals Real Ecuador uttered an anti-Brazil slur, Sandro spat at him, and the other player punched him. Both were sent off. Sandro called the police. He only agreed not to prosecute for assault after the manager of the whole league intervened to offer a compromise: no prosecution in return for a revocation of Sandro’s red card and consequent suspension.

We had a successful season in 2006, reaching the cup final against Real Ecuador…

2006 Cup final pre-match line-up

… which we ended up winning, 1-0.

Back row second from left Sebastian, fourth from left Micah, second from right, shirtless Sandro

In 2008, Sandro left New York to go to business school in Geneva without ever having realized his dream of the league/cup double. He passed on the captainship to another Brazilian, a skillful but selfish striker not naturally attuned to management. When he disappeared on a trip, leaving the team rudderless, I volunteered to step in. I’ve been the Boss ever since.

Football management is tough. It involved tortuous negotiations with the league organiser, a small, mustachioed Ecuadorean man called Tonto, who resembles Manuel from Fawlty Towers.

Tonto at his station

Tonto’s clownish ineptitude meant that refs regularly didn’t turn up. We had to play some games in the dark because Tonto hadn’t told the park authorities to switch on the floodlights. When my friend and co-captain, Micah, was taken to hospital after a mid-air collision had smashed open his head, Tonto was forced to admit he had never taken out an insurance policy, even though we had already paid him for one. Micah was left on his own for the hospital bills.

One time, we arrived at the field and there were actually no goalposts. Another time, we played at a field, with the bank of the East River on one side and, on the other, a factory forecourt fenced off with barbed wire. We lost nine balls.

Entering the 2009 season, my first act as captain was to appoint a reliable Morgan Stanley English banker, Anthony, as vice-captain and treasurer. We signed up to an online team-management site, for players to mark availability efficiently. We also recruited a tall, strong, young American called Jack to play sweeper. He had an all-American, Kennedy-like reliability about him. He had a goal-kick that regularly tested the opposing keeper, and became our Tony Adams. We won the league that year, but not the cup competition.

Micah, in blue, in action beside the East River

Managing a large squad of young, unpaid, testosterone-pumped competitors was a constant challenge. I had to gather the league fees, and deal with private poverty appeals. One player whose fees I waived was a Jamaican musician, who had just lost custody of his daughter and had to pay massive child support. Then there was the challenge of getting 13 players to the field each week. If too many turned up, I had enraged complaints that 45 minutes playing time was not enough to warrant the sacrifice of a whole Sunday afternoon. Too few, and we had a mad scramble to recruit from neighboring fields, or even on the subway on the way to the game. Once, when the World Cup tempted away most of our squad, we had to play with only seven players.

Sebastian heads clear

I approached last season more seriously. I’d just turned 40. I realized I had to protect myself from aspiring captains in my ranks questioning whether I was too old to lead the team. The way to do that was to devise a ruthless strategy for victory. I brought on a co-captain and recruitment director, Micah, whose day job is motivating high-school students to find vocational careers. Micah found us two Japanese stars: Koji, who had played pro football in Argentina; and Yuya, who had moved from Japanese pro football to try out for the New York Red Bulls, Thierry Henry’s team. We started using Powerpoint presentations to lay out the line-up for the team. I even persuaded my girlfriend to prepare half-time oranges.

For the first time in Manhattan United’s history, we won the double of both the league…

… and the cup.

Micah & Sebastian at Man U's peak

Last November, we set our sights higher and joined the Gotham League, one of the best in New York. Micah and I agreed to make Jack a co-captain and treasurer. He played on another 7-a-side team called Client Nine — named after the FBI”s codename for former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, when investigating him for prostitution. Client Nine would become a good source for recruiting new players, including one amazing midfielder, a Surrey-born Brit named Vinnie, who had three lions tattooed on his thigh and a metal toe with a force to shame Rosa Klebb.

I was now feeling like a real football manager. I felt a close spiritual communion with Arsėne Wenger.

Our first match was an epic one. It was at 10pm, on ghostly Roosevelt Island, next to a lunatic asylum. The path to the field was strewn with smack needles. The opposing team, Salamina Reds, had 20 perfectly hewn American players in their early twenties, with shirts emblazoned with a sponsor’s name, and a coach with a clipboard. We were 4-1 down by half time. We were saved, however, by a Deus Ex Machina, a Nigerian player who had turned up for Salamina, but then didn’t like the coach so defected to us. He scored a spectacular hat-trick to save us a point.

We lost our second game to Bean’s Rejects, when our goalkeeper didn’t turn up and Jack had to play heroically in his stead. But this was America, and we picked ourselves up, winning our next four games. Before our 4-0 thrashing of Brooklyn Gunners, my girlfriend overheard their captain saying. “Look at all those studly subs. They’re trying to build an empire.”

Surely, I thought, we’re heading for Everlasting Glory!

Fate stopped smiling on Manhattan United at half-time in our penultimate game of the season, against Peckham Rangers. We were winning 3-0. To have any chance of topping the league, we needed to beef up our goal difference over Salamina Reds and Bean’s Rejects, who were both still unbeaten. I thus told the team that we would change our Christmas-tree formation of 4-2-3-1 – the elegantly pragmatic style favored by Arsenal and World Cup winners Spain – to a more aggressive 3-2-3-2 formation. Two players disagreed vociferously: a Scottish-American friend of Jack’s with a red beard; and an Argentine who fancied himself to be Lionel Messi. I firmly asserted my managerial authority and over-ruled their objections.

Redbeard then started screaming violent reproaches at various players, prompting me to pull rank and tell him to shut the f**k up. Redbeard stomped off. Meantime, Messi responded furiously when I subbed him out, and impertinently called on me to sub myself. I complied, but wanted to strangle him for undermining my dominion.

We eventually won 6-0. I felt my formation switch had been vindicated, but the mood in the team afterward was sullen. My friend Topaz whispered to me, “Dude, there’s mutiny brewing.”

“Stop trying to freak me out,” I snapped.

“Hakim [a veteran Moroccan eye-doctor] just asked me to join another team that Jack is forming,” he said.

“Jack? No way. He’s sound.”

I approached Jack as we were leaving the field. “Hey, is everything fine?”

“Yeah, totally. Redbeard just has a hot temper.”

I decided to forget about the incident and put it down to Topaz’s paranoia. I would keep my head whilst all around were losing theirs.

Redbeard mercifully didn’t turn up to our final game against Brooklyn Chaos. We out-classed them and were 3-0 up with 10 minutes gone. Greed set in. Everyone wanted to score. We had four subs, but I didn’t substitute myself, believing it was a privilege I had earned as captain and manager. When I told the Argentine Messi-wannabe to give up his place to the daughter-less Jamaican musician, Messi refused. That was a straight attack on my sovereignty. I insisted, but Messi just shook his head. With the game suspended, even opposing players were calling for him to go. In the noble spirit of Governor Blagojevich, he felt entitled to remain in his position. The ref refused to instruct him to leave the pitch. I told him he would not be welcome to play next season unless he went off. He replied, “I don’t care. I’m moving back to Argentina anyway.”

Messi prevailed over my command, yelling at me to replace myself. I felt the icy panic of influence evaporating. We won 10-2, but the rout held no joy.

We ended up a decent third place in the league. After mercilessly deleting Messi from our roster, I emailed the team rousing congratulations for our 2010 record: Played 24, won 18, drew 3, lost 3. Goals for: 95. Goals against: 24. I signed off saying that I looked forward to seeing everyone in the spring. I felt I’d done a fantastic job. Ah the hubris.

In late January, I emailed Micah and Jack to suggest a captains’ dinner to plot a triumphant next season. Micah responded enthusiastically; Jack mysteriously did not reply.

Four days ago, I emailed the entire team to notify them of our first game, in two weeks time. I received a mail back from Jack saying that “I will not be returning to the team.” He had decided to start up his own team in the Gotham league, and was taking a massive eight players with him. I felt completely blindsided. How could Jack not have warned me? How could he have run with most of my core team and left me and Micah with only two weeks to re-build our team before the new season?

I met up with co-captain Micah for a run round Brooklyn’s Prospect Park to assess what had happened. My suspicion was that Redbeard had poisoned Jack against us. We debated whether to do a Jerry McGuire and start calling up the deserting players to entreat them to remain with us, and, if necessary, offer them a bigger better deal. I called one, a reliable left back, but got his voice-mail. I called Jack to see if there was room for compromise, but the call went to voicemail too.

Our Gitanes-smoking, Swiss center-half, Francois, had emailed that he was in, but suddenly changed his online status to a big red cross. Jack had got to him too. Yuya did not respond to an email confirming he was in. Our striking genius was lost. Even my daughter-less Jamaican, whom I had helped in his hour of need, suddenly went offline when I messaged him on Facebook. This was a full-on coup d’état. And the leader of the putsch was the noble stalwart I had trusted. Et tu, Jack?

This was truly the Second American Revolution.

Now I just stare at the Manhattan United availability screen, where a list of 51 names of once-loyal fellow players has only two ticks in the column marked ‘Spring Season’ — my name and Micah’s. The others are sickeningly empty. And I know what it must feel like to be Hosni Mubarak, staring out at the sea in his desolate Sharm-El-Sheikh mansion, railing at the treachery of fickle former friends, anguishing over what could have been done to preserve power, and cursing tragic pride.